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The Montreal Expos were in transition in 1984. Although they had posted the best overall winning percentage in the National League from 1979 through 1983, each of those years had ended in disappointment.1 The Expos’ only playoff appearance in that span came in the strike-shortened 1981 season, and even that brief success was overshadowed by […]

The New York Mets arrived at Wrigley Field in August 1986 with a commanding lead in the National League East. But the Chicago Cubs opened their five-game series with two wins. The second came when pinch-hitter Jerry Mumphrey snapped an eighth-inning tie with a three-run homer on August 5, leading the Cubs to an 8-5 […]

Many of the 25,884 fans in San Diego’s Jack Murphy Stadium on August 23, 1986, were looking forward to a postgame concert featuring The Monkees, an iconic rock group of the 1960s on their 20-year reunion tour.1 But the afternoon’s main attraction was a baseball game between the hometown Padres and the visiting Philadelphia Phillies. […]

The Indians and Tigers opened their 1960 campaigns on Tuesday, April 19, in Cleveland. The Indians had finished 1959 in second place, five games behind the AL pennant-winning Chicago White Sox. Detroit had ended the year in fourth place, 18 games out of first place. Two days before the season opener, the teams made headlines […]

Montreal Expos fans were bursting with excitement in the summer of 1979. Although they had enthusiastically supported more than their share of cult heroesin the franchise’s early years, they certainly didn’t have much on-field success to cheer about. In the team’s first decade (1969-1978), Montreal averaged a woeful 91 losses per year, failing to finish […]

To say that the Montreal Expos faced some adversity on the road to their first-ever playoff appearance would be an understatement. In their first decade of existence (1969-1978), the Expos never finished higher than in fourth place in the National League East standings and their record was below .500 in each of those years. Although […]

In the first minutes of Tuesday, July 13, 1976, police in the central New York State village of Newark responded to a report of a fight. They found the body of a teenage boy, shot dead, on the village’s Norton Street. The victim, 17-year-old1 Daniel Monzon,2 had come to the small town from Puerto Rico […]

The Atlanta Braves’ offense wasn’t exactly feeble in the first month of the 1985 season. When they began a three-game series against the Montreal Expos on May 10, they had scored the third-most runs in the National League.1 Braves center fielder Dale Murphy, a two-time league MVP and baseball’s hottest hitter, boasted a .365 batting […]

The 1959 Indians had finished in second place, five games behind the Chicago White Sox, despite significant weaknesses at second base and third base. Cleveland general manager Frank Lane sought to strengthen the team’s infield before the 1960 season, even if it meant sacrificing some pitching. On December 15, 1959, Lane traded 19-game winner Cal […]

The New York Mets took sole possession of first place in the National League East Division on April 24, 1986, by defeating the St. Louis Cardinals 5-4 in 10 innings, for the sixth win of what turned out to be an 11-game winning streak.1 They built up a six-game lead over the rest of the […]

In the years that followed, it was simple to say that victory in Game Seven was preordained after their miraculous escape from Game Six, but triumph in the deciding game was far from assured. As in the 1975 World Series, the Red Sox — after their own legendary ’75 Game Six win on Carlton Fisk’s […]

It was quite a game for a holiday – or any day. It was quite a game for the 16,571 mostly Boston Red Sox fans at Fenway Park. And it was quite a game for slugger Jim Rice, who hit the only walk-off grand slam of his 16-year career to make the Red Sox winners […]

If Bobby Ojeda tantalized the team he once played for in Game Three of the 1986 World Series, Ron Darling tortured the team he grew up rooting for in Game Four. A night after Ojeda got the New York Mets on the board for the first win of the Series by holding Boston to 1-for-7 […]

When he was 36 years old Paul Krichell found himself at something of a crossroads in his baseball life. After many years playing professional baseball—including two nondescript seasons in the majors—Krichell had become a minor-league manager. Near the end of the 1918 season, however, Krichell resigned and quit Organized Baseball in the wake of a […]

From 1934 to 1951, the name Johnny Hayes appeared in newspaper sports pages and box scores for seven Negro baseball teams. His career, interrupted by service with the US Army during World War II, was split between the second Negro National League (NNL2), the Negro American League (NAL), and the short-lived United States League (USL). […]

A switch-hitter who was adept at getting on base, Wally Schang was considered by many of his contemporaries to be the best catcher of his time. Behind the plate, the 5-foot-10, 180-pounder was one of the most athletic catchers of his day, so agile and alert that he occasionally played third base or in the […]

In an era when baseball players were supposed to be upper-class gentlemen and amateurs, Doug Allison didn’t fit the mold. He came from working-class origins and he was one of the first players to turn professional. Allison introduced two innovations that now are universally followed by all modern catchers. Douglass1 L. Allison was born in […]

Richard Leo Gedman fulfilled his childhood dream in his tenure in the major leagues, suiting up for over a decade for the team he grew up rooting for. Gedman, a native of Worcester, Massachusetts, spent parts of 11 seasons (1980-1990) as a catcher for the Boston Red Sox. The two-time All-Star also played for the […]

Pitcher Jim Wilson was a right-hander who played 16 years in professional baseball, including 257 games in major-league ball over the course of 12 seasons — despite being near death after having his skull fractured by a line drive off the bat of Hank Greenberg. He went on to become the first Executive Director of […]

The last position player who played with a major-league club for an entire season and hit .400 was not Ted Williams, but it was a fellow Red Soxer: Roger LaFrancois. Roger used to go to Red Sox games as a kid. He signed with the Red Sox and came up in their system, even receiving […]

A journeyman who spent parts of seven seasons in the American League, Wally Mayer joined the Red Sox in 1917 and spent two campaigns as a reserve catcher.   Although he did not appear in the 1918 World Series, “Kid” Mayer did help Boston get there by smacking a pair of 12th-inning game-winning hits against AL […]